[fishersman]

Media Portal uses genre_translation.xml to map the genre to Kodi's Genre id's. Kodi uses this not only for colored EPG, but also as the genre label when you do a listitem.genre in the skin. The problem is they are all mapped to movie genre, not television genre. If you remove the genre for 0x10 type, it defaults to show/gameshow. I'm pretty sure that's a type 0x30. Now 0x30 has the different tv show types, but if you build out say sitcom, it still returns show/gameshow. Is there anyway this can be fixed? I have looked and looked and cannot find the Kod1 Genre id's. Some of the codes in the default genre_translation.xml don't seem to exist. If this isn't the proper place to post this let me know. I posted here as it's media portal dependant.

[fishersman]

I did a lot more searching and testing and found that a good portion of the default genre_translation.xml doesn't work anymore. I went through most of them 1 by 1 and found what did and didn't. I also discovered that type 0xF0 which in the notes of the default says user defined, is basically the same as 0x10, but without the movie labels which is great for most of the EPG, but if this is user defined, how do we define or change it? Can anyone tell me where in Kodi this is coded with all the subtypes as about 1/2 the ones don't work anymore. I wouldn't care so much if this was just color effecting, but this xml file determines the genre label for your EPG and recording information. I don't mind digging into it, just don't know where the type and subtype fileds are defined as they obviously have changed over the years.

Thanks

[fishersman]

Thru a lot of playing around I found that genre_translation.xml is required for any genre to come thru the mediaportal pvr addon. If you put a dummy entry in that xml file that maps to nothing, the genre for your guide and timer window show the original genre as it appears in the database. It is passed thru to kodi intact. The colors don't work so well tho. The genre for recorded info is not passed thru. That has to have a matching genre in genre_translation.xml to map the pulled genre to the old Kodi standard. For some reason the original strings are not passed thru for recordings. However, if you put an entry that matches, the recordings and color work, but it also changes the label in your guide and timer listing. Maybe when they update the addon to fix the timer for Jarvis, they can fix this too. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one interested in this.

[margro]

Some background info for better understanding:
XBMC originally only supported genre numbers (type/subtype). This follows the standardised European DVB EPG genre numbering.
MediaPortal only provides genre strings, so by default XBMC did not receive any genre info.
The genre_translation.xml file is basically a reverse mapping from the official English DVB EPG genre names back to the corresponding numbers.
The meaning of the fields in the default provides file are 100% standardized so they are definitely not changed over the years as far as I know.
If the genre string matches, the addon returns the corresponding numbers to Kodi, otherwise (for EPG entries) it will send the original string.

The Kodi color coding is based on the genre type value. The Confluence skin just fetches the genre type value and selects a corresponding picture with the same number.

The problems arise when EPG data comes from different sources like XMLTV or any other non-DVB source. Genre strings are then not standardised and can be even in a different language. There is no way to automatically provide a universal translation file that works for everybody.

What I've done in the past to cope a bit with these non-standard strings is to extend XBMC/Kodi with a special type/subtype value outside the normal range to tell XBMC that we would like to provide a genre string instead.
Currently, only the EPG items can provide a genre string. The recording and timer structures do not yet provide a genre string field, so I can only pass type/subtype id's and not the original string.

Adding support for showing genre strings for recordings and timers will not happen anymore for Jarvis, but it is certainly something we should add lateron.

[fishersman]

Thanks for the details. Having the dummy file works for me right now. According to old posts by you I sifted thru, the genres that I'd like to use existed, but they are no longer there. I went thru each one. Not a big deal. The Guide and timer are fine for now.

[fishersman]

The meaning of the fields in the default provides file are 100% standardized so they are definitely not changed over the years as far as I know.
If the genre string matches, the addon returns the corresponding numbers to Kodi, otherwise (for EPG entries) it will send the original string.


Currently, only the EPG items can provide a genre string. The recording and timer structures do not yet provide a genre string field, so I can only pass type/subtype id's and not the original string.

I was looking at this again and a couple of things caught my attention. The defaults have changed. I went thru each of them. I can post a list of what is currently available in Jarvis.

Also, I do get the strings for the Timer listings. Recordings is the only thing that requires a match. If there is a match for either EPG or Timer, than the label is changed. That is why I have a dummy file with no matches to allow Timer and EPG to pass the strings.